


That Nature Versus Nurture Paradigm

by Opacifica



Series: Lalonde Personpain [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aggressively Canon Compliant, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Family Issues, Gen, Inappropriate Grocery Store Conduct, Rebellion, The Homestuck Epilogues: Candy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 04:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21469855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opacifica/pseuds/Opacifica
Summary: The fate of the rebellion rests on a multi-pronged plan to secure the alchemic means to feed a Troll Kingdom under embargo. General Rose Lalonde goes grocery shopping and meets her maker.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde & Roxy Lalonde
Series: Lalonde Personpain [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1547608
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49





	That Nature Versus Nurture Paradigm

Of late, the human population of the Carapacian Kingdom has been rapidly in flux. It’s an appealing option for expatriates of the Troll Kingdom, of which there are no shortage, since the skies overhead have darkened with imperial drones, warships, and mechanisms of surveillance. Human expatriates, of course. Non-trollish entities being the only individuals currently authorized to _leave_ the boundaries of the nation-within-a-nation.

You don’t look especially out of place, which is pivotal. In fact, immediately after your return to Earth C, you used to live here with Kanaya. Rather than worrying that you may be spotted by hostile observers, your preoccupation, at the moment, is whether some former neighbor will call attention to your presence.

If any of the carapacians that pass on the deep purple sidewalks recognize you, they charitably keep quiet about it.

It might have been more tactically advantageous, at least so far as matters of potential identification go, to perform your errands in New Prospit, but you’re simply far more familiar with the layout of the Dersian District. Familiar in the way that a childhood friend turned enemy is familiar, with a sickly twinge of asynchrony behind the comfort of well-practiced intimacy. You have tread these streets a great many times. They have never been a danger to you. Kanaya used to walk safely by your side.

The world has changed drastically, but the map of the Dersian District is unchanging. You keep your eyes downcast, a white silken headscarf borrowed from Kanaya’s vast collection covering your hair, an uncharacteristically _conventional_ purple gown permitting you to blend in as effectively as someone a solid foot taller than the majority of the populace is ever likely to assimilate.

You are not the only human. You remind yourself of that; that you don’t stand out nearly as much as it feels that you do, that your errand is hardly tattooed across your face, that no one has reason to suspect the lone woman, walking late at night to the grocery store, of anything untoward.

That you aren’t, precisely, doing anything illegal, yet.

You worry at the hem of your scarf, thinking unaccountably of your childhood, many years prior. Subtlety was never your preferred method of lurking about in your mother’s home, but perhaps it would have served you better than your customary dramatics. It’s odd, now, melding seamlessly into any place, so deliberately avoiding attention. That has never been your forte, precisely.

With the Light comes the tendency, if not always the desire, to be Seen, just as much as the proclivity for Seeing. Very little about your small arsenal of extrahuman capabilities has the potential to be useful in this endeavor, barring extreme circumstances, which you hope to avoid entirely.

Standing before the Dersian Night Market, you inhale deeply, then exhale, counting to five as you do so.

You slip through the sliding doors, envisioning yourself as transparent as a ghost, willing the aisles of groceries to captivate the attention of the other late night marketgoers. The Dersian District is primarily nocturnal, though there is no hour at which the streets can be said to be strictly ‘busy’. You breathe more easily once, after a moment, no alarm heralds your entrance, no drone emerges from the produce aisle, no shiny-plated faces whip up to lock eyes with you, hands inching for their telecommunications devices.

A teenaged human in a faded purple apron looks up briefly, nods, and returns to their work at the register. Their Prospitian coworker tiredly carts off a stack of boxes to restock. A Dersian couple with a small child in the basket of their shopping cart ignores your entrance entirely as they trundle past.

The baby waves at you.

You blink, unsure of how to react, until the cart turns down the frozen foods aisle and they disappear. That settles that, you suppose, clenching your fist absentmindedly, the sting of your short nails digging into your palm centering you, somewhat, in your body, your purpose. You are here to purchase meat, fresh vegetables, and pivotally, anything you can find that contains insect protein.

The most recent strike by the human-controlled government destroyed the vast majority of three different outposts’ supplies, including several alchemizers. A tremendous blow, though ideally not one that you would let on about having experienced. While the main body of the rebellion remains secure and well-fed, several simultaneous missions are currently underway to re-provision the auxiliary forces. This is your small but key part in the matter. ‘Fundamental’ representations of things are necessary to operate your gerry-rigged alchemizers in the absence of grist mechanics, and while the rebellion has stockpiled substantial amounts of ‘authentic’ nonperishable food, to secure the dietary health and wellbeing of trolls, humans, carapacians, and consorts alike, additional resources will be needed.

Crockercorp has long since halted the function of appearifiers in the Troll Kingdom, and within that geographic sphere, their use has been found to prompt discovery by drones and heavy military response. Karkat has made it very clear that fiddling around with them is not to be risked. Jade, the first near-casualty, was enough to put him entirely off the idea. Had she not been ultimately caught while returning to the catacombs for lunch, it would have been Heroic. Utterly untenable.

You eye a slice of grubloaf wrapped in clear plastic. Genuine? How could it be, unless production outside of the Troll Kingdom has begun? You put it back, opting for several fresh cartons of grub paste, tucked beneath your arm, and a few steaks on top of that. With Dave’s assets, at least, money is no particular object. The human government hasn’t entirely figured out what to do about that, in light of the fairly stringent legal protections for human-wielded capital and the fact that he is a literal god, with actual _useful_ capabilities in matters of guerilla warfare, fiscal and physical, for all Karkat insists on keeping him as distant from any sort of action as possible.

Not that you can rightly blame him.

Not that you object, either.

As low-threat an operator as you are, as little as you concretely _do_, in combat or otherwise, word is that the drones have been programmed to target you, on the same tier as Meenah and of higher precedence than most other generals. And all you’ve put your talents to has been predicting air strikes and ascertaining the viability of territory for the rebellion’s purposes! Still, an algorithmic bounty on your head.

You have your methods of obfuscating your presence and your activities, of course, and don’t solely depend on the thin layer of pale silk to disguise yourself. As hard on yourself as you are, as much as you wish to be doing _more_, they’re right not to underestimate you.

Rebels are going hungry. Any of them could be your wife, could be your daughter. You return to the mission at hand. Fruits and vegetables. Vitamins, as well, if you can find any of quality.

As it turns out, the layout of the shop is not perfectly familiar. You hesitate, for a second, near the frozen foods, which _used_ to be the health supplements aisle, you’re sure, and recalibrate, frowning and reaching out with your power. It’s become a crutch, relying on it as a sixth sense, and your frown only deepens when you find something interfering with the light as it reflects back to you (echolocating, like a bat, Vriska likes to say, chuckling at her ridiculous mother). Of course, you’re only trying to sense the presence of those delightful little bags of mandarin oranges, so it isn’t a terrible hardship. But many people rely on the accuracy of your capabilities, and finding them compromised is incredibly unsettling.

So instead, like a normal person - again, something Vriska would say - you look up at the signs, rendered into easily parsable symbols, and follow the arrow that indicates what looks like a bundle of grapes. Your nervousness is slowly ebbing, as several carapacians and a small handful of humans walk past you without a second glance. 

Passing the frozen meals section, however, you feel the prickle of discomfort, not-rightness, intensify dramatically. Your instincts tell you to abscond. Instead, you force yourself to freeze, not to give yourself away just yet, if you don’t have to. This is a stealth mission. It would be to everyone’s benefit if your activities here went unobserved.

With your powers of flight and capacity to confound drones with an excess of audiovisual input, rendering their capacity for target discernment useless, you’re among the few members of the rebellion still capable of leaving the Troll Kingdom without causing a ruckus, as Jade inevitably does on these sorts of missions. She can’t help it; she does nothing subtly. You are a being of pure tact, you tell yourself, turning slowly, making as though to inspect the contents of a freezer full of breakfast sandwiches, allowing you to scope out the aisle from the corner of your eye while still hiding your face.

Suddenly, you understand everything.

Perhaps you should have fled.

Roxy has her hand on the door to an open freezer, condensation pouring out like steam around her, as she stares at you. Abundantly _made_, you stare back, weighing your options. You need to get the fuck out of here, immediately. You will not be sacrificing these supplies to do so. If you time this right, you may be able to add some sort of vegetation to the pile before you decamp in earnest. But there is absolutely no room to hesitate.

Three things happen simultaneously.

She whispers, “Rosie?” as though you’re some kind of apparition.

Harry Anderson appears behind her, holding a bag of what appear to be tomatoes. “Hey, mom, is three enough, d’you think?”

You unleash a brilliant surge of pure light, and without waiting to see what happens, turn on your heel and walk away.

Well, you don’t see, but you See. Although she flinches back reflexively, the light rolls off her like it’s contacted an impenetrable bubble of pure Nothing, which extends to shield her son as well as herself. It stalls her for a second, the panic as to his wellbeing, and you take that time to stride purposefully towards the only quadrant of the store that you have not yet visited, from which your nephew appeared with his produce.

Swiftly and deliberately, you take a bundle of bananas, a bag of tiny oranges, and a yam. You don’t bother walking to the refrigerated produce near the fringes of the store. No time for that. You make for the register, an excess of cash already in hand. They will simply have to keep the change. It’s unlikely that Roxy will go directly to law enforcement, but Jane will know of your presence here soon enough. The lesser the fuss that you can make as you exit, the more time you’ll buy yourself and your fellow rebels. You must keep your head.

“Rose!” she calls, her voice an octave higher, and you can sense her hurrying after you just as much as you can hear her. “Harry Anderson, go to the car.”

“But mom!”

“Now!”

He hurries off. While not, himself, a void in your sight, you’re acquainted with his signature, and you can feel him reluctantly comply. Slowly, deliberately, not wanting to make a scene, you turn to face her. Neither of you ought to be able to do much to physically harm the other, short of turning to fisticuffs. And that had always been Dave and Dirk’s purview, rather than your own.

“What the _hell_,” she demands. “That’s your nephew! You could have blinded him!”

“It was unlikely,” you say briskly.

“Rose!” she repeats, and you grind your teeth, willing the attention of all potential onlookers anywhere but on the two of you. At least, in this regard, Roxy is an asset rather than an albatross. No one in the store seems to have noticed the confrontation brewing near the check-out lines.

She notes the set of your jaw, it seems, and changes tacts.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she adds. “I just didn’t expect to see you out here! It’s been, uh, kind of ages since I’ve seen you at all, so, ah, sorry if I…”

“It might be for the best if you forget having encountered me,” you tell her.

“What if I don’t want to forget, huh? What if I’m worried about you, and I miss you, and I love you?”

“Then you have a fascinating way of showing it. I am going to leave, now.”

“Don’t! Do you - do you need help with anything? I’m not, like, on a side, you know, in all of this stuff, I just don’t want to see anyone get hurt, that’s all there is to it.”

“Interesting. If you’ll excuse me, please, I’m needed at home. Your _bestie’s_ drones have recently been authorized to target my daughter as a domestic terrorist, and I’m sure you’ll understand my reluctance to leave her alone for long. Harry Anderson might have some thoughts on the matter, actually, and I suggest that if you have further questions, you discuss the matter with him rather than with me.”

Now it’s Roxy’s turn to grit her teeth, gaze flickering around the area, noting the presence of bystanders. Before you can escape, she lifts up her hands, and the world around you turns hazy and ill-defined. Privacy, you suppose.

You do not want to have this conversation right now, or ever.

“I don’t blame you,” you say stiffly, hoping to appease her.

“Yeah, you do, though,” she _snaps_. “I have a family to think of, too, Rose.”

“There was a point at which you seemed to consider myself and Kanaya and our _daughter_ to be your family. It would appear that your definition has evolved.”

“You know that isn’t fair!” she insists. “You disappeared! I care about you _so much_, I’d die for you, Rosie, if that’s what you want! Just, ugh, but you gotta actually tell me stuff! You can’t drop off the map and wonder why I never talk to you! You’re _unreachable_!”

“Yes, because there is a bounty on my head. I don’t wonder why you have lost contact with me. I know exactly why, and the answer does not flatter you. If you truly want to help me, Roxy, you will conclude with these theatrics and get out of my way.”

The world - your world, not hers - is on fire, and you have no time for this.

Suspended here, in this blurred space-between-spaces, the noises and activity of the supermarket still both audible and palpable from outside of your vague microcosm, you struggle to swallow the anger searing in your chest, up your throat, closing like a vise around your trachea. For the most part, you’re able to accept your present circumstances. To enjoy the life you've built and the people you love, even more acutely with the coming war as a backdrop.

You’re happy, damn it, for the most part, you’re grateful for what you have.

Something about her guileless insistence on neutrality, on having been there for you just as surely as she has for the woman who would gladly herald the news of your death, stokes some long-forgotten coals in you in a way that Jane herself does not. And you can’t entirely explain why.

“None of this would have happened if we could all just sit down and talk, y’know, like friends, like we used to,” she says quietly. “It kinda feels like I’ve been doin’ double duty, trying to keep _anything_ together, basically since Dirk died, y’know? Jane and Jake and Harry Anderson are really all I’ve got left, and -”

“Don’t try to blame Dirk for this,” you say shortly.

“Of course not! I just mean -”

“I don’t care what you mean. I care about what is happening around us. I care about the millions facing shortages in the Troll Kingdom, I care about my daughter, who is barred from enrollment in public schools, and I care about my wife, who could extrajudicially, yet entirely legally, be shot and killed in the streets if identified positively by a Crockercorp drone. Do you understand that your actions have consequences? How far beyond _talking about it_ we all are? I hope that you will reconsider your stance, at some point. You will not be invited to my funeral, but at this rate, you will have your hand in it nonetheless.”

“Rose,” she whispers. “I’m _sorry_...”

“I’m _leaving_.”

You reach through the veil of void surrounding you, feeling it yield to the intensity of your observation and stepping through the rend in the fabric of uncertainty.

Even after all of that, you pay for the groceries without incident, and exit the market, preparing for the quick walk back to the sheltered point, between two massive buildings, with no inward-facing windows, where you will take to the sky and return home. It’s cruel, you think, that this is the universe in which you’re content. That your ‘good end’, as it were, never includes your m - Roxy. 

That you have to lose both parents to be happy.

You shake your head, shoulder your grocery bag, and begin the first leg of your trek home.

“Hey, aunt Rose?”

Mid-contemplation, you turn sharply, quite ready to fry the brain of anyone interrupting your musings, only to find that you are face-to-face with Harry Anderson, yet again, his hands over his eyes, as though that would protect him.

“Please don’t call me that,” you say. “It makes your relationship with my daughter far more uncomfortable than necessary.”

“Oh, ha ha, I guess it makes sense that you’d know about that, sorry.”

“Is there something that you need?” you ask, feeling impossibly weary at the prospect of any other interruption, itching to deliver the promised goods safely, to make your way back to your wife’s arms.

“I just, well, I haven’t heard from Vriska in a while, and I -”

“She is safe.”

“Yeah, I could have guessed that, she’s really badass, obviously.”

You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose in an effort to collect yourself. He gets the point, clearing his throat and closing his mouth for a moment.

“Is there something _important_ that you need?” you clarify.

“Uh, yeah. You’re going back to the rebellion or whatever, right?”

His confidence visibly withers as you raise a single eyebrow in response.

“Sorry, not talking about that. Can you… maybe take me with you? Seriously, like, I promise I’m totally serious, I’m not going to have another opportunity like this! I don’t _want_ to be politically neutral, and I don’t want to sit around at aunt Jane’s house all the time waiting for someone I love to get blown up! That’s all we ever do, and I hate it, and I just want to help! I don’t even care if I lose an eye or whatever, I just don’t want to have to find out that someone I love is dead from, like, the news, when I could have been… you know, doing something.”

You press your lips together and consider the young man before you. Barely sixteen. At sixteen, you had died multiple times, in multiple timelines, lost the people you loved the most, found them anew only to lose them again. You suffered incalculably. Perhaps he does too, stuck at home while the war brews. You wouldn’t know what that’s like. It must be quite frustrating.

“With utmost respect, Harry Anderson,” you say carefully, and he wilts even further at your tone, “if you could convince your mother of half of that, you would do more for the rebellion than ten of you with guns in their hands.”

“But I -”

“She loves you very much. She may listen to you.”

And you give up. You pass the burden that you can't carry to this narrow-shouldered boy, who you're certain looks younger and scrawnier than you ever have. Roxy is not your mother.

“But!”

“Listen to me. Carapacian neutrality in this conflict has come at a grievous cost to the rebellion, and your mother’s unwillingness to take a stand plays a role in that. Show her your good sense.”

He frowns, but doesn’t argue, taking a step back.

“Can you bring Vriska a message for me, then?”

“I am a god, not a carrier pigeon,” you say, smiling slightly. “I will tell her that you are accomplishing something important for the rebel cause, at great personal cost.”

“Okay. Um. Thanks.”

“Be safe, dear,” you tell him, pulling Kanaya’s scarf more firmly over your hair and slipping away into the shadows.

…

Roxy pauses mid-sentence, staring at some point in the middle distance, more through John than at him. She’s got her legs tucked under her in some kind of confusing-but-probably-comfortable position - it’s sort of weird, how none of his friends can sit like regular people. This couchbound reconciliation has already gotten a lot heavier than he initially intended to go, but he’s glad, honestly, that he and Roxy seem to be sort of on the same page about the whole Jane thing, or at least reading from the same book, for once.

Finally, her gaze comes back into focus, and she smiles sadly. God tier or not, lines have formed around her eyes, and they deepen into visibility when the corners of her mouth press upwards.

"The more I thought about it, the more I figured holdin' onto that one thing made me lose out on some other shit."

He nods, squinting, like the act of doing so will help him see whatever she was seeing, or remembering, or whatever. Her smile widens at the gesture, and she almost laughs, swiping her palm over her face and into her curls, sweeping them from her forehead.

“You might relate,” she adds.

He does.


End file.
